Very Small Business: episode guide

Basics of Team Building

Don Angel is a small-business man — the backbone of this great country's economy. But if that's true, it's no thanks to him. After numerous unsuccessful business ventures, Don's World Wide Business Group is now hurtling towards liquidation.

To give the impression of a much grander business than what he's got, Don sells the advertising space in his five magazines under different aliases. He can sell the ads, he just can't write the articles. So he hires Ray Leonard as his sole journalist.

Taking his first tentative steps back into the workplace after a six-year battle with depression, Ray enters a world totally alien to him. He's come from being a noted social commentator for The Australian to writing advertorial for 'Wilson's Woodwind and Brass' Autumn Sale — which might just be his cure.

But Don's debts are mounting — he has the bank on his back and a posse of disgruntled small businesses at his door. His wife has left him, and not only does she want to take him for all she can she also expects him to actually spend time with his two kids. To make matters worse, he's just been diagnosed with a nasty case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, which it seems no medication can cure.

Human Resources

Don's children, Sam and Alex, arrive at the office unexpectedly. They inform Don that their mother thinks they should spend more time with him and will be staying with him for the next couple of days. He decides the best way to deal with it is to leave the room and get some air.

Outside the WWBG HQ Don watches a gardening contractor with a leaf blower at work and quizzes him about his mowing franchise. It sparks his next big idea, starting a mobile dog wash franchise.

With Sam and Alex tagging along, Ray meets Leslie for lunch. He struggles to communicate with Leslie due to her new-found love of Jesus. As a possible way to draw her closer to him and away from the church, Ray offers her the dog wash design job.

Export Fluctuations

Don's creditors are hunting him down and things get worse when his doctor diagnoses him with Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Ray's attempt to get close to Leslie fails dismally when Don rips shreds through her design proposal for the mobile dog wash franchise. Ray watches Leslie leave and run into the arms of an older man, who happens to be the pastor from the Pentecostal church.

Don's bowel problems deepen when he hears from his solicitor that a date has been set for his divorce settlement.

Systems Analysis

Don reluctantly begins his appointment with the psychologist Jasmine about his Irritable Bowel Syndrome. She gently unearths Don's struggle with his business and unwittingly reveals just how fruitless his enterprises are.

Back at the office, while Ray listens to a recording of Janet Wilson's local orchestra, Leslie arrives unannounced with Lloyd to invite Ray to her graduation.

Potential dog wash franchisees, Noel and Coralie, arrive to be talked through the Don's Dirty Dog Wash. Fuelled by his frustration about Leslie's graduation, Ray pitches them the business with uncharacteristic gusto.

Obligations Under the Taxation Act

Three auditors from the Tax Office arrive unannounced at the World Wide office to investigate why Don Angel hasn't filed a BAS statement for eleven quarters.

Ray attends Leslie's graduation where he comes face to face with Jerome, Leslie's biological father. While the auditors from the Tax Office try to unweave Don's web of deceit, a posse of the World Wide Business Group's disgruntled creditors turn up at the office. They want to take action against Marcus Goode, James White, Kerry Akermanis, Pete Mandela and Hayden King — not realising that they are all Don's aliases.